Unions Enter Pacts to Boost Members

Two of the country's biggest health-care unions are working together to secure deals with hospital chains as part of a growing strategy to buck a trend of declining unionization.

The Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association are signing so-called neutrality agreements with the chains, in which the hospitals don't object to organizing and the unions don't conduct negative campaigns against the employers or try to organize workers at certain hospitals.

Such deals have provoked resistance from some union members, who say the agreements limit employees' role in the organizing process, though some labor experts say they are a way for unions to boost membership.

The SEIU and the CNA entered into a cooperation agreement in 2009, resolving a battle for health-care employees that began in 2008 when the unions were fighting over 8,000 Ohio workers at Catholic Healthcare Partners hospitals.

Since April 2010, the SEIU and the CNA have organized roughly 10,000 nurses and other hospital workers at Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Inc., one of the nation's biggest hospital chains.

HCA agreed to let the unions organize workers at 20 hospitals in Florida, Texas, Missouri and Nevada without employer interference, according to a summary of agreement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Under terms of the year-long pact, which took effect April 1, 2010, HCA agreed to provide the unions lists of employees, to allow them on company property and to hold expedited elections. It also agreed not to support efforts by employees to decertify the unions at any hospitals.

In return, the unions agreed to refrain from broad negative campaigns against HCA or trying to organize workers at other HCA hospitals. Since April, the CNA has organized more than 5,000 nurses at 13 HCA hospitals in those four states and didn't lose any elections. The SEIU has organized more than 4,500 HCA staff.

Labor attorneys who advise companies say the pacts are becoming more common because they are the most effective way for unions to gain new membersand they can give companies some stability.

"This is the primary way that unions are gaining new members," said Michael Lotito, a San Francisco-based attorney with Jackson Lewis LLP, who has negotiated such deals for companies. "This way, the company puts the whole issue behind them and focuses on whatever critical issue is before them."

Union membership fell last year to 11.9% of U.S. workers, from 12.3% the prior year, the Labor Department said this month, continuing a decades-long slide.

The CNA reached a neutrality agreement with Tenet Healthcare Corp. in 2007 that extends through 2011, while the SEIU has signed pacts with nursing-home employers in California and Washington state in recent years. A deal between the SEIU and a health-care company in Illinois runs through July 31, 2012.

Mr. Lotito said companies typically agree to the pacts to avoid a negative union campaign, which can be damaging during initial public offerings or when companies are seeking regulatory approval for such things as hospital expansions.

HCA spokesman Ed Fishbough said the deal "establishes a procedure for allowing employees at some of our affiliated hospitals to decide for themselves through secret ballot elections if they want union representation." Still, he added, "We do not believe having a union is in the best interests of our hospitals; however, we respect our employees' rights to make this decision."

"We're in the process of negotiating contracts in every one of [the HCA] facilities that we won in 2010," said CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson.

Representatives for the SEIU didn't respond to requests for comment on the deal.CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson declined to comment on the HCA agreement.

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